Diagnosing the Green Party.

• Author: Frank, Joshua
• Position: Thinking Politically

The ashes of the 2004 election battle have finally settled, and sadly the Green Party is buried in the rubble still grasping for air. Even so, if you have heard any of the sordid mutterings from staunch Green loyalists, they are spinning quite a different tale.

Take prominent Green apologist Ted Glick, who has failed miserably at seeing the error of the Green Party's choice to run David Cobb in 2004. "[Our vote total] was less than expected," he recently spewed in an online missive, "but the fact is that the cumulative vote for all 14 'third party' Presidential candidates on the ballot ... was a little less than 1.2 million." Apparently, to Mr. Glick, such a diagnosis somehow emancipates the GP's own tepid performance--for no third party did exceptionally well.

Not sure if the Greens' vote total was less than expected, however, David Cobb told Counter Punch during the "height" of his quest for the presidency that he had "no goals for votes."

The Greens could and should have been vociferously opposing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but they opted for a "smart-growth" (read: safe-state) strategy instead, where they'd stay well below the electoral radar. They should have been on the frontlines of the campaign scene, denouncing John Kerry and George Bush's neoliberalism and their handling of the downward economic spiral, civil liberties infringements, and environmental catastrophes. Instead, the Green Party caved and, regardless of what Ted Glick and others claim, they paid a steep price, getting pounded at the polls as a result.

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David Cobb and his running mate Pat LaMarche earned a little over 118,000 votes on November 2, 2004. Even though only half a million people voted for Ralph Nader in 2004--a drastic decline compared to four years earlier when 2.8 million people voted Green--Nader still managed to garner five times as many votes as the GP on Election Day 2004, despite being vilified by professional leftists, Greens, progressives, and bemused Democrats.

Many still cite the drastic reduction in votes for Nader in 2004 as evidence of failure but it is wrong to compare his two runs in these terms. In the second case, Nader had no party to back him, and in the wake of the 9/11 "Anybody But Bush" hysteria, many who were with Nader in spirit decided to cast their votes for John Kerry in hopes of unseating Bush. Political expediency didn't work, however.

An example of the ruin: In Minnesota, the Green Party has enjoyed...